The Child Christ and St Theresa in a Flower Garland

Look at what is actually growing in this wreath. Holly, blackthorn, brambles, a medlar, borage and a thistle, with orange blossom, pomegranate flower and a madonna lily among the roses. It is a hedge and an orchard rather than the tulip beds that fill most of the garlands Seghers painted, and the Prado's index of this canvas also records a scorpion, a garden tiger moth and a housefly somewhere in the leaves.

The middle is painted in grisaille, so the figures read as carved stone. Whoever wrote the museum's 1857 catalogue described it simply as a medallion with figures in chiaroscuro and named nobody. The title today gives Christ and Saint Teresa, while the museum's subject index for the same canvas also lists Catherine of Siena.

At 130 by 105 centimetres this is the largest of the Prado's Seghers garlands. It came from the collection of Charles the Fourth, and in 1818 it was hanging at Aranjuez in the room of the gentlemen-in-waiting, entered in the inventory as one of two flower pieces.